Animal Testing

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what guidelines he has introduced to control and monitor non-medical testing on animals; and if he will make a statement;

(2) what controls and safeguards he has introduced to ensure that essential medical research experiments on animals are carried out humanely and with the minimum of suffering; and if he will make a statement.

Section 5(3) of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 specifies the purposes for which scientific work on living animals may be performed. Most of these are concerned in some direct way with human, animal or plant health, but the definition extends also to work designed to promote progress generally in the biological or behavioural sciences, or undertaken in the context of tertiary and higher education and training or forensic science. Other provisions of the Act ensure that
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work is permitted for any of these purposes only where fully justified, and subject to strict controls designed to protect the welfare of the animals concerned.